Tag Archives: engineering education

Engineers Registration and Productivity in Australia 2025

This is an edited version of my original post on June 28. The final submission is now available from the links in this post. A big thank you to all the people who provided valuable feedback and suggestions for improvements.

This post releases my draft submission to the upcoming government productivity summit in Australia: it will be a written response to the call for public comment by the Productivity Commission.

In this submission I argue that the current system for registration of engineers in Australia is not fit for purpose. Instead of registering individual engineers we should register engineering firms instead because firms influence the performance of their engineers more that individual attributes like technical proficiency or competency.

I suspect this will be a novel idea for many and might be controversial. Any feedback will be welcome, especially counter-arguments.

Engineers are key actors influencing productivity in Australia. Engineers conceive, deliver, operate and sustain products, infrastructure and systems that enable ordinary Australians to be productive.

There are two significant engineering performance issues in Australia imposing significant avoidable costs on government, private firms and the community.

  1. Large and small engineering projects are failing to meet investor expectations, causing large losses for Australian companies and governments amounting to at least AUD 50 billion dollars annually. These failures arise partly because they remain hidden by their owners so engineers cannot learn from past mistakes, partly because of collaboration weaknesses, and partly because most engineers have only a weak understanding on how their work contributes economic and social value. Apart from the financial impacts, these failures are also delaying our energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
  2. Performances on routine engineering work such as maintenance show similarly large opportunities for improvement. UK and Scandinavian research has observed that even in large and well-organized companies, operating and maintenance mistakes contribute opportunity costs up to 50% of reported turnover. The core issues lie with the interactions between people, mediated by computer information systems.

Both issues have significant productivity impacts. The immense costs are potentially avoidable. Even a 10% reduction in losses would be a significant productivity boost.

Neither engineers nor engineering have been mentioned in Australian Productivity Commission reports since the mid-1990s. It seems that the significance of engineering as an influence on Australian productivity has been overlooked in the past few decades. Perhaps the magnitude of the issues I have raised will help to change that.

In the detailed submission, I explain why significantly improved workplace education would help engineers learn how to avoid these costs. Currently, there is no effective feedback of project and engineering practice failures and shortcomings, so it is not surprising that there is no performance improvement.

Policies that incentivise firms to invest more in workplace education for engineers could lift performance standards and might help avoid many of these costly failures.

In this submission, I argue that the most effective policy change would be to introduce a national engineering accreditation and registration agency (NEARA) for engineering firms. Firms would be reviewed and awarded ratings indicating their financial strength, discipline expertise, engineering capability development and training, strength of their systems, processes and procedures, and quality management. Initially it would likely be voluntary for all except firms involved in work posing large safety hazards such as apartment buildings over a certain height, major energy and chemical plants, nuclear installations, tunnelling, large underground or open cut mines, facilities with bio-hazards, etc. As the agency demonstrates its benefits, registration requirements might be widened. Alternatively, if the benefits are substantial, there might be no need to widen registration requirements because firms would seek accreditation as part of their business development.

Engineering professional societies would continue with certifications such as Chartered Engineer and EngExec because these qualifications would contribute towards accreditation ratings for engineering firms. However, the current state-based registration of individual engineers could be phased out over time.

A further policy suggestion is to require government agencies commissioning major engineering work costing more than $500 million to engage appropriately qualified consultants to review project plans before final investment decisions are authorised, and also to perform detailed evaluation studies on the projects and their outcomes 12 months or more after completion. The results of these evaluations should be made available to the federal agency responsible for registering and accrediting engineering firms so the knowledge gained can inform workplace education for engineers.

In this submission I explain why this national approach could be effective, and why the current state-based registration schemes are not fit for their intended purposes.

Illustration Credit: Adobe Photoshop generative AI produced this stereotypical image of engineers at work, supposedly in Art Deco 1930s style. Like all AI these days, AI propagates popular misconceptions about engineers. Engineers don’t wear hard hats in the office! And these safety helmets were not around in 1930! If it attracted you to read the post, then it did its job.

STORM at Stanford – An AI Breakthrough?

I have been finalizing the chapter drafts of the new edition of my book Learning Engineering Practice. The publishers were keen for me to address AI, artificial intelligence (or actual incompetence?). In the first chapter I addressed this topic, arguing that AI tools really just average all the hearsay and misplaced notions one can pick up on the internet. Even the best (Perplexity) could not pick up systematic research on engineering practice that shows engineers are not doing what they’re taught in school. Any engineer can tell you that, of course. But could STORM, a new AI tool configured for real researchers, really figure that out? I actually hoped that it would, and I would therefore have to modify my final first chapter draft.

I heard a glowing account of STORM on Youtube from Danny Lui at Sydney University in a TEQSA video: you don’t get a much more authoritative source on higher education than that in Australia. So I decided to give it a trial run. My research focus is engineering practice, systematic ethnographic research studies on what engineers really do, which is not what we teach in universities.

STORM was touted as a big advance on ChatGPT because, for one, the references it gives you are actual sources, not invented ones.

I first asked for a review of research studies on what engineers actually do in their work. The response was a rather boring “average” of widespread popular notions on what engineers do, framed in terms of design, problem-solving and communication skills. Collaboration was acknowledged as a critical element (10/10), mentioning that engineers frequently attend meetings with colleagues, clients and project managers. Effective communication, it said, is essential for bridging the gap between technical and non-technical team members. And then gave me a reference to a site advertising a recruitment agency, not a peer reviewed source.

Unfortunately, STORM was unable to distinguish systematically researched studies on engineers at work from hearsay and gossip sources. It’s analysis of engineering work reflects widely held but woefully inaccurate ideas that circulate in engineering faculties, where the faculty teach but reluctantly admit that they know nothing about practicing as an engineer.

So, I decided to give STORM another chance. I gave it a more precise prompt: “Engineering practice, the nature of engineering work”. Unfortunately, the results were broadly similar, almost word for word in some sections.

So, as a last chance, I gave an even more precise prompt: ethnographic studies of engineers at work. Again the results were disappointing and again STORM could not differentiate between systematic peer-reviewed research studies in books and journals on the one hand, and social media gossip on the other. The single study it managed to find was inaccessible because the URL was incorrect. However, I did locate the 25 year old article and found it was very superficial in its findings and coverage.

Would this be useful for an entry-level researcher? Absolutely no. The results are misleading, dated, based on commercial hearsay and gossip. Any student using this tool will get is a lot of trouble with a research supervisor who knows the topic. This has done little to move my current assessment of AI as artificial incompetence. And, I have argued that the AI business case does not stack up, given my knowledge from being in robotics and artificial intelligence since the early 1970s and my current knowledge of the digital advertising industry.

Sometime, soon perhaps, but maybe still in a few years, I foresee a horrible financial crash when investors finally work out they have been sold just hype. But don’t bank on it.

Picture Credit: Photoshop generative image production. I acknowledge all the artists whose work was scraped off the internet, probably without their knowledge, and certainly without any financial compensation, to enable software like Photoshop to generate images like this.

Added

After testing STORM, a friend suggested I try Claude. Claude provided similar responses to Perplexity and ChatGPT. I directly asked Claude for a literature review of ethnographic research on engineering practice and how it reveals what engineers actually do, and what we don’t know about engineering practice, the result was 7/10 for a student literature review. It was still easy to identify it as AI-generated.

The point here is that it was only because I knew that the research existed, and the keywords to find it, that Claude was able to generate a satisfactory result. A Google Scholar search yielded far more and more up-to-date references. Claude (and Perplexity) were able to identify relevant issues.

Only Claude was able to write a reasonable literature review document. So, yes, nice tools which would definitely help get a young researcher started, but no substitute for actually reading the literature and allowing time to understand what it tells us.

All of the Chatbots responded to the initial question “What do engineers do” with popular misconceptions, and none could point out that researchers have shown these to be misconceptions without being specifically directed to that research.

When I asked Claude what it takes to transform an engineer’s concept for a solution into practical reality, again the response provided an outline of the technical steps, missing a lot of what has to happen. Crucially, it missed the essential requirement for finance! This reflects the widespread intellectual separation between engineering writing and business.

So AI chatbots, predictably, are a good way to assess popular misconceptions on a topic. A knowledgeable human researcher is needed to help them get closer to the best known truth of the matter. And Google Scholar (and other specialized search tools) are essential for getting to the contemporary literature.

Learning Engineering Practice – Help Needed for the 2nd Edition

I was honoured to receive a message from Taylor & Francis, my publisher, telling me that the book has sold very well and they would like an updated edition.

On my list for improvements so far are:

  • How AI can help early career engineers and pitfalls to avoid (ie which types of AI can be trusted to be helpful);
  • More emphasis on LinkedIn for job seeking;
  • Distinguishing different kinds of engineering work in the introduction: professional engineering, engineering technologist and engineering technicians;
  • Ideas for early-career engineers on how to apply an understanding of social and economic value generation in engineering practice; and
  • Influence of climate in low-income countries.

I need your help, please.

Please re-familiarise yourself with the book, and send me suggestions for improvements, including any of your own experiences that could help with the topics above. Also, if you really think a chapter or part of a chapter is not needed, please let me know. I want to keep the book as short and easy to read as possible.

Send me an email or reply to this post and start a discussion.

Engineering Heritage – Construction of Narrows Bridges 1956 – 2006

As engineers, we often complain that the work of engineers is often overlooked in the history of human development.

Historians then point to the lack of source materials for them to work with. They are not really interested in the technical aspects of artefacts such as tools, bridges, machines, electrical supplies and so on. However, they are really interested in the people who created those artefacts, how they were used and how they influenced the behaviour of people at the time.

This is why recording and preserving our engineering heritage is so important. I started volunteering with the engineering heritage community of Western Australia last year, and the further I get into it, the more fascinating it is becoming.

Here is a recent achievement, even though it is work-in-progress: a detailed account of the construction of the Narrows Bridges in Perth.  

While any large bridge is an impressive artefact, it’s easy to lose sight of the personal stories behind it. Working on a large bridge, particularly one in a prominent location like these ones in front of the city, is an aspirational goal for any civil engineer. However, the high-pressure realities and psychological stresses involved in bridge design and construction can be a rude awakening. Some engineers walk away with psychological scars lasting decades.

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Where’s the value in climate-smart engineering?

It was a privilege to be invited to lead a discussion on this at the recent Climate Smart Engineering conference by recorded video because I had to be in Pakistan for a family wedding at the same time.

Coolzy.com is my daily work: a portable refrigeration cooling machine running on just 300 Watts that provides the lowest cost personal cooling solution around, with minimal climate and environmental impact. That’s a nice illustration of climate-smart engineering. The need is critical right now! https://bit.ly/3uNY5H2

But it’s not so easy for many engineers to understand how their work creates economic, social or environmental value.

To help engineers better appreciate how their work creates value, Bill Williams and I have updated our Guide for Generating Value in an Engineering Enterprise, first released in 2017. It’s needed just as much today … Tell us what you think.

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Two Indian Engineering Disasters in a Week

A rail crash killed 275 people in Odisha, a $200 million bridge collapses for the second time in Bihar.

Politicians look for engineers to blame. Economist Ashoka Mody’s great book “India Is Broken” suggests instead that corrupt politicians, around a third of whom face criminal charges, are to be blamed.

Seeking individuals to blame is likely to obscure the real causes. These and hundreds of smaller, less notable engineering disasters every year result from organization failures, not individuals.

Unfortunately, there is still considerable ignorance about engineering practices, even among our own engineering communities.

Effective engineering at its best can be extraordinarily dependable: think about the amazing rarity of serious aircraft crashes given that tens of thousands of aircraft are flying at any given moment. We have known for decades that air safety depends on high reliability organizations that allow for human error. Multiple layers of organization and technological barriers keep us flying in safety, so people can make mistakes and the organizational systems protect us from the consequences, almost always.

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Beyond Competencies

Is it possible that much of the engineering education research community, myself included, has misunderstood the notion of competency? With many others, I think, I was unaware of literature drawing attention to some of the mistakes that can easily be made when talking about competency. I conclude by suggesting a way forward, beyond ‘competencies’.

How did I reach this position?

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A Big Question

How are we going to adapt engineering education to prepare coming generations of engineers for climate warming and the need to protect people and infrastructure? How can we prepare them to re-engineer almost our entire civilisation to eliminate greenhouse and other harmful emissions in 25 years?

As you would know, I often write about engineers and engineering, and education issues. However, I have usually stopped short of specific recommendations, relying on my books and articles to convey ideas that educators can use.

Next week I am speaking at a panel discussion at Engineers Australia Perth on Wednesday March 31, 5:30 – 8pm. Register here to join in the discussion and contribute your ideas, or if you cannot join us then, reply to this post.

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